irst
introduced to Miss Stirling to find in her the almost exact
embodiment of that ideal. She was introduced afterwards in
many of his pictures.

In a letter addressed to Mrs. Schwabe, and dated February 14, 1859, we
read about her:--

She was ill for eight weeks, and suffered a great deal...I
know you will feel this deeply, for you could appreciate the
purity and beauty of that stream of love which flowed through
her whole life. I don't think that I ever knew anyone who
seemed more entirely to have given up self, and devoted her
whole being to the good of others. I remember her birth like
yesterday, and I never saw anything in her but what was
lovable from the beginning to the end of her course.

Lindsay Sloper, who lived in Paris from 1841 to 1846, told me that Miss
Stirling, who was likewise staying there, took for some time lessons
from him. As she wished to become a pupil of Chopin, he spoke to his
master about her. Chopin, Lindsay Sloper said, was pleased with her
playing, and soon began to like her.

[FOOTNOTE: To the above I must append a cautionary foot-note. In his
account to me Lindsay Sloper made two mistakes which prove that his
memory was not one of the most trustworthy, and suggest even the
possibility that his Miss Stirling was a different person from Chopin's
friend. His mistakes were these: he called Mrs. Erskine, who was with
Miss Stirling in Paris, her aunt instead of her sister; and thought
that Miss Stirling was about eighteen years old when he taught her. The
information I shall give farther on seems to show that she was older
rather than younger than Chopin; indeed, Mr Hipkins is of opinion that
she was in 1848 nearer fifty than forty.]

To her the composer dedicated his Deux Nocturnes, Op. 55, which he
published in August, 1844. It was thought that she was in love with
Chopin, and there were rumours of their going to be married. Gutmann
informed me that Chopin said to him one day when he was ill: "They have
married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death." Of Miss
Jane Stirling's elder sister Katherine, who, in 1811, married her cousin
James Erskine, and lost her husband already in 1816, Thomas Erskine
says: "She was an admirable woman, faithful and diligent in all duties,
and unwearied in her efforts to help those who needed her help."
Lord Torphichen, at whose residence (Calder House, twelve miles from
Edinburgh) Chopin passed much of his time in Scotla